' and invites instead to 'come with me to Eochaill
reaping the yellow harvest.' Then he steals the comb, and the mother
gives her wise advice how to get it back:--

'He will go this road to-morrow, and let you welcome him; settle
down a wooden chair in the middle of the house; snatch the hat from
him, and do not give him any ease until you get back the beautiful
comb that was high on the back of your head.'

But an Aran man has told me: 'No, this is a very serious song; it was
meant to praise the girl, and to tell what a loss she had in the comb.'

I am told that the song that makes most mirth in Aran is 'The
Carrageen'; the day-dream of an old woman, too old to carry out her
purpose, of all she will buy when she has gathered a harvest of the
Carrageen moss, used by invalids:--

'If I had two oars and a little boat of my own, I would go pulling
the Carrageen; I would dry it up in the sun; I would bring a load
of it to Galway; it would go away in the train, to pay the rent to
Robinson, and what is over would be my own.

'It is long I am hearing talk of the Carrageen, and I never knew
what it was. If I spent the last spring-tide at it, and I to take
care of myself, I would buy a gown and a long cloak and a wide
little shawl; that, and a dress cap, with frills on every side like
feathers.'

* * * * *

'(This is what the Calleac said, that was over a hundred years
old:--)

'"I lost the last spring-tide with it, and I went into sharp
danger. I did not know what the Carrageen was, or anything at all
like it; but I will have tobacco from this out, if I lose the half
of my fingers!"'

This is a little song addressed by a fisherman to his little boat, his
curragh-cin:--

'There goes my curragh-cin, it is she will get the prize; she will
he to-night in America, and back again with the tide....

'I put pins of oak in her, and oars of red pine; and I made her
ready for sailing; for she is the six-oared curragh-cin that never
gave heed to the storm; and it is she will be coming to land, when
the sailing boats will be lost.

'There was a man came from England to buy my little boat from me;
he offered me twenty guineas for her; there were many looking on.
If he would offer me as much again, and a guinea over and above, he
would not get my curragh-